Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Take that, you stupid manuscript! And that!! And another!!

I am now one chapter and the Epilogue away from being done with the current edit of The Promised King Book One: The Welcomer. Interestingly, I'm finding a lot less flab in these late chapters, as it's pretty much all action and battle as opposed to dull backstory that's not "back" enough and endless ruminations on what thoughts are flitting about inside the craniums of my characters. (Hmmm...."craniums"....I wonder if that should be "crania"....ach, who cares.) My average number of words cut per chapter right now is just over 800, but the last three chapters have been significantly below that. As for my target of 18700 words cut, I'm about a thousand short of that. I should be able to squeeze that much out of the remaining material.

So I'm finishing this in the next couple of days, and then it's "portion and outline" time -- followed by the typing of Book Two: The Finest Deed, which I'm both looking forward to and dreading in a way. I haven't revisited that story since I wrote the longhand draft three years ago, and I know that there will be parts that I like a lot and other parts where I'll scratch my head and say, "Jeebus, what were you thinking?!" Anyway, I figure it will take roughly a year to get Book Two up to speed. Prolific, I ain't.

ADDENDUM: Since the request has been made in the comments, any of my readers wishing to peruse the manuscript are willing to subject themselves to my incredibly rigorous screening process (which basically consists of me checking for a pulse).